


I forget about time and space

by sonatine



Series: born to strange sights [1]
Category: Howl Series - Diana Wynne Jones, Howl no Ugoku Shiro | Howl's Moving Castle, Howl's Moving Castle - All Media Types, Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Past Lives, and by that i mean poor and brilliant, doctoral students living it up in the 80s
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-17
Updated: 2017-03-17
Packaged: 2018-10-06 20:59:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10344450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sonatine/pseuds/sonatine
Summary: “Wizard Howl,” Ben says dryly, coming to shake his hand, “I must apologize for my earlier behavior. Normally I wouldn't dream of sinking my teeth into a fellow countryman.”Howl can see it in Ben’s eyes; the image of Ben’s teethmarks, perfect and circled, on Howl’s neck, which he tenderly covered with concealer the next morning before Howl had to give a lecture on T. S. Eliot to a room of first-years. Another lifetime.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fireblazie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fireblazie/gifts), [dirtybinary](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirtybinary/gifts).



Howl is stuck in that hazy limbo of evening in summer, where it seems the sun will never set and Blue Monday has crawled into his skin, and Ben says, “Why am I still looking at a metric fuckton of dishes in the sink?”

“Because I had thesis review this morning,” Howl says, passing the cigarette over politely, “and I made ten cups of tea.”

Ben climbs through Howl’s bedroom window and into the tiny garden, which is not so much a garden as it is a patch of concrete.

“Whilst revising?”

“Whilst dodging Bianca’s calls.”

“How do you know it was her calling?” Ben says, finishing Howl’s cigarette like a true housemate only can. He rolls another one though, and Howl revokes any fantasies of torture and maiming.

“The ring is more shrill.”

Ben snorts. He stretches out his legs, which he can only do about part way until they get stuck against the concrete wall.

Ben is everything Howl wishes to be: brawny ginger Irish farm stock, with a pair of wire glasses slapped over his face of bar-fight scars. Howl is slim, dark, and pale, a caricature of Welsh miners stuck underground in the rain.

(“Mining isn't heredity, Howell,” Aneurin Jenkins said around a mouthful of the same soup and bread he had for dinner every day, and fifteen-year-old Howl vowed to bleach his hair and move to the city and read James Joyce and stay out till dawn.)

“It was a good plan,” Ben says loyally, because he is the best person to live, maybe ever. “Pity Joyce is a dickhead.”

“Pity we’re too poor to stay out till dawn.”

“Pity we’ve got peer review in the morning.”

“Pity we don't give a shit,” says Howl and Ben laughs that uninhibited bellow that Howl loves more than himself.

They stay out until dawn dancing to The Kinks and _only_ The Kinks after Ben wires the DJ’s turntable onto the one current album with a bit of spare engineering parts he has stashed in his pocket.

“You crazy fucker,” Howl shouts at him, delighted. Cardiff doesn't seem so intolerable with Ben there with him, nor a reminder that it's a London-wannabe and Howl hasn't yet achieved even one of his life goals.

Ben grins and lights another cigarette and then somehow it's already daylight and they're racing down the streets of city centre because no cabs will pick them up in tattered clothes and running mascara and reeking of discotheque sweat.

They slide into their respective peer reviews at 9am on the nose, still drunk but still brilliant.

* * *

Ben is waiting for him after rugby training, and they go to the pub halfway between the university and their flat, because where else would they go?

One of the team, a third-year undergrad Howl doesn't know so well, refers to him as “Sullivan’s fairy.” Ben decks him with one swing.

Howl holds Ben back from another and says nothing about the secret thrill in his stomach; he thinks about bleaching his hair blond again.

* * *

The police come to Howl first when Ben disappears. Their questions are pointed and leading, probing for _heroin_ admissions, but Howl is firm.

“Ben doesn't use that stuff,” Howl says. “He's a doctoral student.”

“Mr. Sullivan has a history of violence,” says the fuzz, “and dozens of eyewitness to a pub brawl last week.”

“That was warranted,” says Howl. “Pete Brown called Keats an overrated milquetoast.”

The policeman stares. Howl stares back.

Ben turns up two days later, sheepish, and smugly silent about where he's been.

“You wouldn't believe me,” Ben says, infuriatingly.

“The next time you go on a secret bender and _don't invite me_ ,” says Howl, “you can forget having me do the glass recycling.”

“Glass has no business hitting other glass in the proximity of human ears,” says Ben.

It isn't until they're forty-minutes deep into a debate about the vernacular of Oberon versus Ariel that Howl notices the streak in Ben’s hair.

Howl pulls the strand away from Ben’s face. “Going grey already, old man?”

Ben frowns at it. “Huh.” He shrugs and shakes it back. “Interesting side effect.”

“A rather normal one of time passing, I’m told,” Howl says dryly, and throws his cigarette into the empty planter. “Let's go to the cinema.”

“You hate the cinema.”

“I’m being brave today,” Howl says, and somehow Ben understands the _I was worried about you_ underneath.

* * *

They leave after ten minutes, when the popcorn is gone, and go to the used bookstore instead. The tired, harassed owner eyes them sharply as they wander the aisles.

Ben tosses Howl a tattered paperback.  _The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe._

“Oxford needs to keep a tighter leash on their lecturers,” says Howl.

Ben smiles, small and secret. “Don't be jealous.”

* * *

“Are you coming down for the funeral at the weekend,” Megan says in lieu of greeting.

Howl pulls the receiver away and stares at it for a moment. “Who’s meant to have died?”

“Dad. Which you'd know if you or Sullivan would ever answer the phone. I've been ringing you for days.” And then almost in the same breath: “Gareth and I are getting married and we’re moving into the house. We’re burying dad next to mum. Also you need to reimburse me for the phone bill. I’ve been on it nonstop making arrangements.”

Howl does put the receiver down then.

Ben, who heard every syllable of Megan’s booming voice, looks at him from across the room.

Their flat is a living room with a twin bed and a kitchen. Howl sleeps in a converted closet with a window five feet up. He likes his small, safe space, but there are drawbacks: see _privacy_ , exhibit A.

Howl is saying “no,” even before Ben finishes, “Do you want me to come?”

* * *

“You don't have to do everything alone,” says Ben.

He's angry.

Howl says, “If I can't rely on myself, then whom?”

“You can be pedantic again when you're emotionally stable,” says Ben, hustling Howl onto the bus and then into the train.

Howl didn't even remember packing his bag, but there it is in his hand.

“Joke’s on you,” says Howl, crammed against the window of a coach with no air-con that smells of armpit and mouth-breathers. “My deathbed will contain greater literary merit than a single Donne quatrain.”

“I’d bloody well hope so,” Ben says around his fourth cigarette of the trip. He says it like a blessing.

* * *

They never talk about it. It just starts happening.

It's cold and rainy one night, the bitter laughter of June that knows you've been enjoying the nice weather, thank you, now fuck off and have some freezing rain.

It’s two days before Howl’s birthday and he's not even feeling sorry for himself — it’s just that Ben’s room doesn't have a leak and also his window ledge is more convenient for smoking.

They don't talk about it, because it's not a big deal, and also Howl just got dumped by Caitriona and Ben is crawling his way out of a five-year relationship.

They're just both touch-starved.

A year passes, then another, and Ben gets an assistant lecturer post in Swansea. He commutes for a while, then eventually finds a flat closer to the university there. Howl is deeply invested in Fiona at this time, and also his post-doc research which is bringing him to the British Library in London twice a week.

They lose touch, and it’s not until Fiona refers to Howl’s room as “the closet” that he sees things through her eyes: a one-person flat with a camp bed shoved in the cupboard.

He breaks up with her and starts seeing Niall instead. He still sleeps in Ben’s old bed.

* * *

Howl’s memory is a sieve except for whatever his current obsession is, so it takes him exactly four months to realize he hasn't heard from Ben in a while.

He turns up at Ben’s place in Swansea on Samhain. The woman who answers the door says “no trick-or-treating or any other American nonsense” and then “Benjamin who?” and finally, “I think the previous tenant moved abroad,” and latches the door firmly behind her.

Howl bribes the landlord into a cup of tea with a well-placed smile and an armful of Bailey’s, and learns that Dr. Sullivan of 2B left abruptly at the end of June, leaving all of his furniture and things behind, mind you, “And he wasn't the _tidiest_ of professors either,” she adds conspiratorially, as if hesitant to speak ill of the dead.

Howl rescues a box of Ben’s thesis research from underneath the old lady’s sink. Her cat was very put out to be losing its favorite napping place.

* * *

 Of course it would be a door, Howl thinks, the old copy of C. S. Lewis tucked into his shirt pocket. Ben could never resist a good pun. He never appreciated a _subtle_ irony like Howl did.

* * *

  
The star is frightened and flickering and Howl feels sorrier for it than he’s ever felt for anything.

“You don't have to do everything alone,” Howl tells it, and then swallows it whole.

* * *

  
“I’m sure you know that I still consider myself engaged to Benjamin Sullivan,” says Miss Angorian.

Her vowels are clipped and she gives off a charred ozone scent, like Calcifer.

“Never heard of him,” Howl says with his most brilliant smile.

Miss Angorian is a mirror image version of university-aged Howl, and he's not ashamed to admit that it strokes his ego to flirt with his doppelgänger.

Also naturally Ben would be engaged to the female version of Howl. That goes unsaid. Howl can also see Sophie grinding her teeth in utter jealousy beside him, which is — something he’ll process later. A demented creature like him couldn't hold a love like that for long.

* * *

Howl’s heart is back in his chest and beating again, all thanks to a spitfire ginger girl beside him, more real than he could have dreamed up in even his most far-reaching magics.

Near the door of Howl’s beloved castle, Ben is staring, dumbstruck, at the thin, pale dark haired witch (who appears to be the true and only Lettie Hatter in this mad family).

“Wizard Howl,” Ben says dryly, coming to shake his hand, “I must apologize for my earlier behavior. Normally I wouldn't dream of sinking my teeth into a fellow countryman.”

Howl can see it in Ben’s eyes; the image of Ben’s teethmarks, perfect and circled, on Howl’s neck, which he tenderly covered with concealer the next morning before Howl had to give a lecture on T. S. Eliot to a room of first-years. Another lifetime.

“Think nothing of it,” says Howl.

* * *

Howl spots Ben across the ballroom of the over-embellished coronation ball of Princess Valeria. He grins and raises his glass; Ben, sharp and triumphant, does the same.

Royal Wizards. They made it.

* * *

Howl explains the technicalities ten times, but refuses to call it anything other than “wizard cancer,” because he is a shithead and Sophie has never wanted nor deserved anything more in her life.

“Morgan’s only just _five_ ,” she keeps saying, like repeating it will make it untrue.

“Most orphans are younger than ten,” Howl tells her.

She laughs instead of crying, because there will be plenty of time for that later, and Howl makes her promise to shack up with a mermaid after he's gone. She doesn't give too many protests.

* * *

The Swiss skater that came in third to him last season is waiting for Viktor in the hotel lobby when he arrives for the Trophée.

“You cut your hair,” he says, and it doesn't sound at all disapproving. “You don't miss being mistaken for a girl anymore?”

Viktor tosses his head like he still has the length. “Ben, please.”

They pause.

“You _wound_ me, Viktor,” he says, falling back against the wall with his hand over his heart. “You're heartless! Cold as ice!”

“You know I'd forget my own head if it wasn't attached to me,” Viktor says. “Of course I remember you, Giacomo.”

“Giacometti.”

“See?” Viktor leans in and smolders. “How about a drink? There’s that place across the street. O’Reilly’s.”

“O’Brien’s.”

“Oh dear,” says Viktor, laying it on thick.

Chris appreciates the effort. He holds out an arm for Viktor to take.

Viktor chatters at him all the way out, but keeps looking in the wrong direction, as if his brain expects Chris to be taller and broader.

* * *

The next season, Chris has hit his growth spurt. He's also dyed his hair red. Viktor’s mouth goes dry.

* * *

The overhead lights of the Barcelona diner keep glinting off Yuuri’s new ring and Viktor is distracted.

He knows he's given strange answers to a couple questions he didn't properly hear, because Phichit is snickering and openly sending snaps of him. Yurio, in the corner, glares at everyone like he's upset that he has to share Otabek.

Viktor kind of knows how he feels.

Chris, on the other hand, keeps glancing at Viktor’s and Yuuri’s rings and making pained faces; even though Viktor knows Chris is living with someone in Geneva. A chemical engineer who teaches at the university.

Still. Feelings are feelings, and history runs deep.

“It's just obviously so telling that Georgi would identify with a fairy tale prince,” Phichit is saying. “You _know_ he was some kind of Romanov in a past life.”

“Nobility,” Otabek says, in his solemn way. Yurio’s eyes narrow at Phichit, and he scoots closer to Otabek.

“Exactly,” Phichit chirps. “Like us, we’d be artisans or whatever, but Georgi would be that inbred prince in a castle driving all the shopkeepers broke with taxes.”

“God, _Phichit_ ,” Yuuri says.

“Don't argue! You'd be a librarian or something, Yuuri, he wouldn't give a shit about you.”

“A hatter,” Chris says with a soft smile at Viktor: a peace offering.

Viktor smiles back. “Not a florist?”

He tucks a strand of hair behind Yuuri’s ear; it's growing out and Viktor is a _fan._ But he sees Chris’ expression and drops his hand. They're not quite there yet.

Yuuri flushes at the brief contact. “ _You’d_ be the florist,” he says, blithely eviscerating Chris a little.

Chris retaliates by leering at Yuuri’s collarbones, which are visible through his stretched-out neckline; Viktor lets it slide, just this once.

“You'd all be peasants,” Yurio growls, “and dead of tuberculosis by thirty.”

* * *

 The gala following the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics is predictably over-the-top and garish. Viktor loves it.

He slings an arm around Yuuri, who is flushed and keeps looking down at the silver medal on his chest, and plants a sloppy kiss upon Yuuri’s cheek.

He catches sight of Chris across the ballroom, whispering undoubtedly filthy things into his fiance’s ear.

Viktor raises his glass of champagne; Chris grins back, sharp and triumphant. They've made it.

  

**Author's Note:**

> this makes otabek martha hatter, belle of cesari's pastry shop, which pleases me
> 
> title comes from BORNS' [clouds](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBsFokXkjyIclouds)
> 
> this is a strange niche little fic that is entirely the fault of [dirtybinary](http://dirtybinary.tumblr.com) and [fireblazie](http://fireblazie.tumblr.com)
> 
>  
> 
> [tumblr link](http://sonatine.tumblr.com/post/158527921974/i-forget-about-time-and-space)


End file.
